Ahead of LP&L budget vote, councilman calls for further discussion

Two Lubbock Power & Light budgets are on the table — one with a rate increase and one committing to $10 million in bonds — and Lubbock’s Cty Council can take its pick; that is unless Councilman Victor Hernandez’s plan to organize a conference committee goes through.

Ahead of today’s 6:30 p.m. council meeting and public budget hearing, Hernandez called for a conference committee of LP&L board members and council members to discuss alternatives to the two LP&L budget plans on the table: an initial LP&L plan raising utility rates or a city staff plan, with input from LP&L, shifting the expense of $10 million in capital projects from cash to bonds.

The council is set for a first reading of the proposed 2013 budget during today’s meeting. A second and final reading is set for 6:15 p.m. Sept. 13.

“It is time that the governing bodies of each entity, City Council and LP&L, step in and find a solution which enables the citizens of Lubbock to feel comfortable with their city government as well as with their locally owned utility,” Hernandez said in a news release Wednesday. “Working together, I believe this goal can be achieved.”

Lubbock Mayor Glen Robertson said he doesn’t see a need to look for an alternative.

Since May, council members have twice rejected the proposed rate increase aimed to curb what was once a projected $9.8-million loss in revenue for the municipally owned utility and have expressed interest in the city staff’s recommended plan avoided a rate increase.

“I think it would be a waste of time,” the mayor said. “I see no need to address an issue that’s not there.”

Councilwoman Latrelle Joy said she was open to the city staff’s recommended budget, echoing the council’s concerns against raising the utility rate.

But she was unfamiliar with Hernandez’s request for a conference committee by Wednesday evening and declined to comment on his proposal.

Both Councilmen Todd Klein and Jim Gerlt said they need more time to review the city-staff recommended LP&L budget before committing to it in September.

Klein said LP&L board members and city staff working together on the staff’s proposed budget encouraged him.

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It appears that when the AJ updated this article for the third time, it left my comment behind on an old, cached page. So, here we go, again.
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Thursday is going to be good. I mean it is going to be really good. You see, what we are going to have here is a bit of a political conundrum, one that will forever shatter the false illusions that many of the “hope and change,” kool-aide-drinkers couldn’t wait to vote into office here in Lubbock. Because, what the AJ article fails to mention is that the council that twice denied a tax hike on this issue was in large measure a past council, one that was filled with members who were voted out or retired. So, as the article states, there will only be two real choices come Thursday.

Choice A is that they issue bond debt and Gerlt, Joy, and Robertson can prove themselves to be liars who will say anything to get elected. All three either campaigned repeatedly and openly (in the Mayor’s case) or else co-opted as a part of their platform, the notion that we must pay down city debt at all costs. There was no other alternative to stop the city from financial ruination of a billion dollar debt. And not two months into their elections, they can choose to prove themselves liars and cheats by…shocker of shockers, voting to actually add $10 million more dollars to LP&L Bond debt, which, as a municipally owned utility, means that it all falls under the greater umbrella that is the City of Lubbock.

Also, Glen made numerous mentions while campaigning of how he would curtail the city staff and return the power from behind the scenes to the dais. Interesting that it is the city staff then that wants to shift the cash shortfall to bond debt. Whatever will Glen, Gerlt, and Joy choose to do?

I highly doubt they want to shatter the venire of a campaign promise that accounted for the tent pole of their politicking so soon.

So, Choice B is that they raise taxes. You have been given no other option, citizens of Lubbock, other than to open up your wallet and give more cash to your city for the liberal-lead notion that somehow it’s your privilege to live by government’s monopoly, not the other way around. Pure and simple, we will tax and spend: as liberals so often like to do.

All this just in time for Labor Day Weekend where gas is projected to be at a price premium. All this just in time to match all the other planned tax raises, from the city and, worse yet, that bastion of economic stupidity that is the County Commissioners. For all the outrage last week, the craziest thing you’ll hear Tom Head say all year is he is for small government when he champions more unnecessary tax increases out there.

I’ve said it before and I say it again, as loud as the truth deserves to be heard, “Lucky Me, I Live in Liberal Lubbock!”

** As a post-script, if Victor’s house was on fire, he’d want to hold a committee meeting before calling the fire department. Hench why the "idea" that doesn’t actually solve anything wasn’t put in my list above. **